Glenn Beck Talks with JBS President John F. McManus
Written by Dennis Behreandt
Tuesday, 15 August 2006 00:00
Radio and television news talk show personality Glenn Beck hosted John Birch Society President John F. McManus on his syndicated radio program this morning for a 20 minute interview about the John Birch Society.
The straight-shooting Beck had some good questions for Mr. McManus in a segment devoted to giving his listening audience a chance to learn what the John Birch Society has to say about history and current events. The discussion ranged from Pearl Harbor and the Eisenhower presidency to 9/11, the War on Terror, and whether or not George Bush should be impeached.
After the interview, Beck himself had some questions about some of the assertions made by Mr. McManus. "I was frustrated with the interview because I wanted to know what they [JBS] stood for," Beck said. Frankly, Beck didn't ask this question during the inverview, but for those who want to know the answer, here is brief summary.
The John Birch Society wholeheartedly believes in the words of the Declaration of Independence that all people are endowed with the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The Society also believes that governments are instituted to protect those rights and that in the United States, the Constitution describes the limited functions of our own government in that sphere. The Society also believes that a variety of factors have led to the growth of the federal government far beyond the scope envisioned for it by the Founding Fathers and that the government should, largely through the work of Congress, be brought back in line with the original intent of the Constitution.
But Beck also had some more specific questions about some of the things said during the interview, particularly about advance knowledge of the attack on Pearl Harbor and about the oft-quoted assertion from Robert Welch, the Society's founder, that President Eisenhower often seemed to act as an agent of the Communists.
With regard to Pearl Harbor, Beck said: "I don't believe that any American president would knowingly let our soldiers and let our citizens die just like 9/11. I don't believe that George Bush knew about 9/11 in great detail and I don't believe FDR knew about Pearl Harbor in great detail."
In fact, there are plenty of books that exonerate Pearl Harbor commanders Kimmel and Short and that document the extent of government foreknowledge prior to the attack on December 7, 1941. One of the best is
Infamy, by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian John Toland. In the book, Toland concludes Roosevelt and other high-level government leaders including Gen. George C. Marshall, Adm. Harold R. Stark and others were "a small group of men, revered and held to be most honorable by millions, who had convinced themselves it was necessary to act dishonorably for the good of their nation -- and incited the war that Japan had tried to avoid."
The New American covered the Pearl Harbor story
here and
here.
Other worthwhile books on the subject of Pearl Harbor and the Roosevelt administration include:
Day of Deceit: The Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor by decorated World War II veteran Robert Stinnett and
The New Dealers' War by Thomas Fleming, president of the Society of American Historians.
Communist Infiltration of the Government under FDR and Truman
Switching gears, Beck also said, in wrapping up the interview with Mr. McManus, that he doesn't believe that any President would be "in bed" with communists. The John Birch Society doesn't want to believe that either, but the facts can sometimes be discouraging. As Beck pointed out, we have to be "willing to look under rocks that maybe we don't even want to pick up." Here are some rocks worth picking up, even though what's underneath is rather ugly.
Buffalo State College Professor of History Ralph Raico makes the important point in the book
FDR — The Man, the Leader, the Legacy that Roosevelt was not himself a communist. But he also notes that Roosevelt's "administration came to be riddled with Communists, fellow travelers, and Soviet agents of influence" and "that some New Dealers felt a bond of sympathy, vague but real, with Communism" and that the Soviet model of government exerted a "potent, continuing attraction ... on the minds of New Dealers in and out of government."
One of the highest ranking New Dealers to feel the "attraction" of communism was Harry Dexter White, a Treasury Department official in the Roosevelt administration who, in the
words of Wikipedia, "was a primary mover behind the Bretton Woods agreement and the formation of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank." He was also a Communist sympathizer and a Soviet intelligence asset. There were many others like White in the Roosevelt and Truman administrations, and
Time magazine carried a thorough report on the subject in 1953. That report is online
here.
For a first-hand account of how thoroughly communists were able to exert pressure through the government during the war years, it's worth reading
From Major Jordan's Diaries, by U.S. Army Major George Racey Jordan whose assignment was to expedite Lend-Lease shipments to the USSR during World War II. The book is available for download
here.
Was Eisenhower a Communist Agent?
The charge is frequently made that Robert Welch called Eisenhower a Communist. This stems from a manuscript that started life as a private letter in which Robert Welch put down some of his thoughts concerning events during the Eisenhower administration. It grew in size over time, but remained a private letter until the press got wind of it, presumably on a slow news day, and proceeded to make a mountain out of a molehill. After that, Robert Welch published the whole thing as a book entitled
The Politician and repeatedly asked people to read it and judge for themselves. For the record, after 300 pages (including a voluminous bibliography and countless endnotes) Robert Welch came to a conclusion rather more nuanced than the one usually attributed to him.
The conclusion was this: "Could Eisenhower really be simply a smart politician, entirely without principles and hungry for glory, who is only the tool of the Communists? The answer is yes." In fact, Welch wrote, he had previously revised "the manuscript from that point of view" and "the whole letter had already come to be known as The Politician" as a result.
Consequently, it seems that Mr. Welch held as a personal belief that Eisenhower had no particular agenda other than looking out for himself and that he was willing play ball with the Communists whenever that strategy advanced his own interests. Of course, for a president that could lead to treason, as Welch concluded: "With regard to ... Eisenhower, it is difficult to avoid raising the question of deliberate treason. For his known actions and apparent purposes certainly suggest the possibility...."
Again, this comes after nearly 300 pages of research and documentation. This is a startling conclusion to be sure. But the best thing for those intrigued by this to do is, as Robert Welch repeatedly suggested, to read it for themselves. That can be done
here.
It is also possible to look at accounts related to the same information Robert Welch examined. Some of those accounts and books include:
I Saw Poland Betrayed by former Ambassador to Poland Arthur Bliss Lane and
Operation Keelhaul by author Julius Epstein.
An investigation of all these sources will almost certainly lead to the conclusion that there is more to Robert Welch, Pearl Harbor, FDR, Truman, and Eisenhower than meets the eye.
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